Nordex Weaves Turkish Expansion with Brussels Endorsement as 64% EBITDA Leap Reinforces Recovery

Nordex opens a 130,000 sqm blade plant in Turkey, secures EU commissioner support, and posts strong financials with a €10.5B order book.

The wind turbine manufacturer is pulling off a balancing act that few of its rivals can match: scaling up manufacturing in a key growth market while simultaneously cementing political backing from the European Commission. The opening of a 130,000-square-metre blade plant in Menemen, near Izmir, came in May 2026 just days before EU Commissioner Teresa Ribera toured the company’s Hamburg headquarters to underline wind power’s role in energy security. Together, the twin developments underscore why Nordex has held a roughly one-third share of the Turkish market since 2017.

The new factory, which will eventually produce up to 1,200 rotor blades annually, is designed specifically to meet the local content requirements of Turkey’s YEKA tender process. Without a domestic manufacturing footprint, competitors are structurally locked out of auctions there. The facility is expected to create around 1,200 jobs in the region and should help stabilise margins through scalable production and long-term service contracts.

On the same day Ribera’s visit was announced, the company disclosed a fresh order from longstanding partner Eksim Enerji. The contract covers 16 turbines of the N175/6.X type for the Balikesir-3 wind farm, totalling 110 MW. The machines will be mounted on 119-metre steel towers in a cold-climate configuration, a requirement given elevations of up to 950 metres in the Balikesir province. A ten-year premium service agreement has also been signed, pushing the portfolio Nordex manages for Eksim Enerji beyond 830 MW.

That deal is just one of several pieces of recent commercial momentum. In Germany, the Westphalian energy utility WNE ordered another batch of N175/6.X turbines – twelve units across three projects in the Höxter district, with a combined capacity of 82 MW and a hub height of 179 metres. Installation is scheduled for mid-2027, and the agreement includes 20-year service contracts. WNE had already ordered three of the same turbine type from Nordex in March, this time with a record 199-metre hub height.

All this activity is feeding into a project order book that has swelled to €10.5 billion, a 27% increase year on year. For the full year 2026, management is targeting revenue of between €8.2 billion and €9 billion and an EBITA margin of 8% to 11%.

The first quarter of 2026 offered a taste of what that guidance could deliver. EBITDA jumped 64% to €131 million, lifting the margin from 5.5% to 8.2%. Revenue rose 11% to €1.59 billion, while production output climbed 24% to nearly 1,500 MW. The company’s cumulative installed base now stands at roughly 64 GW worldwide, and annual sales for the 2025 financial year came in at €7.6 billion.

Despite the operational momentum, the stock has been unable to hold its recent peak. Shares reached a 52-week high of €49.42 in early May but have since pulled back around 14%. They were changing hands at €42.30 in the previous session and more recently at €42.48, with a relative strength index of 43 suggesting no overbought conditions. On a year-to-date basis, the stock is still up roughly 41%, and on a twelve-month view the gain exceeds 140% – more than doubling from last summer’s trough.

Ribera’s visit to the Hamburg factory on 20 May, where she was received by CEO José Luis Blanco and CFO Dr. Ilya Hartmann, adds a political dimension that could drive a revaluation. “Wind energy strengthens Europe’s energy security and reduces Europe’s vulnerability to external shocks,” Blanco said at the event. The next concrete milestone for investors will be the second-quarter report due on 13 August, when the market will gauge whether the margin expansion is sustainable.